Advertising using traditional media, such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines, is well known. Unfortunately, even when armed with demographic studies and entirely reasonable assumptions about the typical audience of various media outlets, advertisers recognize that much of their ad budget is simply wasted. Moreover, it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.
Recently, advertising over more interactive media has become popular. For example, as the number of people using the Internet has exploded, advertisers have come to appreciate media and services offered over the Internet as a potentially powerful way to advertise.
Web site-based ads (also referred to as “Web ads”) are some times presented to their advertising audience in the form of “banner ads”—i.e., a rectangular box that includes graphic components. When a member of the advertising audience (referred to as a “viewer” or “user” in the Specification without loss of generality) selects one of these banner ads by clicking on it, embedded hypertext links typically direct the viewer to the advertiser's Web site. This process, wherein the viewer selects an ad, is commonly referred to as a “click-through” (“Click-through” is intended to cover any user selection.). The ratio of the number of click-throughs to the number of impressions of the ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed) is commonly referred to as the “click-through rate” of the ad. A “conversion” is said to occur when a user consummates a transaction related to a previously served ad. What constitutes a conversion may vary from case to case and can be determined in a variety of ways. For example, it may be the case that a conversion occurs when a user clicks on an ad, is referred to the advertiser's web page, and consummates a purchase there before leaving that web page. Alternatively, a conversion may be defined as a user being shown an ad, and making a purchase on the advertiser's web page within a predetermined time (e.g., seven days). Many other definitions of what constitutes a conversion are possible. The ratio of the number of conversions to the number of impressions of the ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed) is commonly referred to as the conversion rate.
Despite the initial promise of Web site-based advertisement, there remain several problems with existing approaches. Although advertisers are able to reach a large audience, they are frequently dissatisfied with the return on their advertisement investment. Some have attempted to improve ad performance by tracking the online habits of users, but this approach has led to privacy concerns.
Similarly, the hosts of Web sites on which the ads are presented (referred to as “Web site hosts” or “publishers”) have the challenge of maximizing ad revenue without impairing their users' experience. Some Web site hosts have chosen to place advertising revenues over the interests of users. One such Web site hosts a so-called “search engine” service returning advertisements masquerading as “search results” in response to user queries. The web site permits advertisers to pay to position an ad for their Web site (or a target Web site) higher up on the list of purported search results. If such schemes where the advertiser only pays if a user clicks on the ad (i.e., cost-per-click) are implemented, the advertiser lacks incentive to target their ads effectively, since a poorly targeted ad will not be clicked and therefore will not require payment. Consequently, high cost-per-click ads show up near or at the top, but do not necessarily translate into real revenue for the ad publisher because viewers don't click on them. Furthermore, ads that viewers would click on are further down the list, or not on the list at all, and so relevancy of ads is compromised.
Search engines, such as Google for example, have enabled advertisers to target their ads so that they will be rendered in conjunction with a search results page responsive to a query that is relevant, presumably, to the ad. Although search result pages afford advertisers a great opportunity to target their ads to a more receptive audience, search result pages are merely a fraction of page views of the World Wide Web.
Conventional cost-per-action advertising pays a publisher when a conversion action transpires as a result of a click-through to the advertiser site using special links and/or cookies that track the status of the end user. Conventional cost-per-action advertising is insecure when tracking the conversion action associated with a cost. Typically, a one by one pixel “callback” is sent indicating a conversion action completion or the advertiser may submit a log of transactions indicating completed conversion actions. Neither of these methods is effective in allowing easy, self-service tracking of conversions. The pixel callback is susceptible to repeated, fraudulent downloading, providing little ability to determine legitimate conversions versus spoofed conversions. The log method requires custom tooling of the advertiser site to provide data to a publisher/payment system, as well as a level of trust between the advertiser and the publisher/payment system. There exists the possibility that untrustworthy advertisers will misreport conversion actions. Further, these methods only allow for one conversion action to be defined per ad. In many cases it is desirable to allow multiple definitions of a conversion action to occur after a click-through of a single ad.